


staring and thinking

by newsbypostcard



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 11:09:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4346288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s hesitant smiles in your direction at camp –- daily, when he emerges from his tent and you look over your shoulder while you’re filling your potions; once in the woods when he sets out a finger and lets a butterfly sit upon it; another time, something more bashful, when he catches you bathing, shirtless, in the creek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	staring and thinking

**Author's Note:**

> another tumblr fic from ~8 mos ago edited and kicked out into the world

It’s like this: you’re sitting across from each other on opposite sides of Herald’s Rest, with you leaning forward and him leaning back, your hands curled around your respective ales, and you _stare._

That’s it. You stare. That’s all it is. There’s nothing more to it.

Or -– more accurately -– perhaps that’s all it _seems_. Because you’re thinking about all the things you aren’t--

 _-(interested in women_  
_-interested in marriage_  
_-interested in your father’s bullshit opinions_  
_-able to let them go, either_  
_-good at having an eye for the long term_  
_-long for this world anyway_  
_-knowledgeable about qunari_  
_-unwilling to learn)_

\--and you’re thinking about all the things he _is_ \--

 _-(tall_  
_-muscular_  
_-taciturn_  
_-muscular_  
_-good with his broadsword_  
_-broad_  
_-muscular_  
_-long for this world, either, at least not at this rate anyway)_

\--and you’re watching the incremental changes in his face over the course of an hour, thinking he’s probably thinking a bit, too.

So now all it is is staring, and thinking. And that seems like quite enough for one evening, sitting in perfect silence and feeling the heat mount in your cheeks in a way it hasn’t done for many years, since you were hiding who you were to make your parents –- your lineage -– happy in Tevinter.

And then you leave. You go to sleep. (After a while, anyway.) And for a while that’s all it is.

Staring and thinking.

But after a while, more and more builds. Then it’s hesitant smiles in your direction at camp –- daily, when he emerges from his tent and you look over your shoulder while you’re filling your potions; once in the woods when he sets out a finger and lets a butterfly sit upon it; another time, something more bashful, when he catches you bathing, shirtless, in the creek.

And it fancies you to pretend you’re the passive party, for once, though that’s hardly true at all. You love taking the initiative, that’s a fact; and in a way you’re still taking it here. The Iron Bull (Andraste! what a name! _The Iron Bull!_ Such tremendous potential held in only three words!) is a gentle force to be reckoned with, he’s something sure but subdued, like the flow of a river over formerly walling boulders, and you're sure that you’ll be the one to step forward in the end. But for now, it’s fun for you to let him chase you, in his way, to sit with him in perfect silence, each of you thinking, staring, commenting occasionally on nearby cliff faces and the inevitable peril before you (though he’d never admit aloud that you face anything but another heartening spar) – to let yourself be wanted, in its simplicity, in its purity.

Staring and thinking. So that’s not all it is, after all. But it goes on for a while like that anyway, as though it were, and that is close enough to the fact of it.

In the end the thing that ends it, the staring and the thinking, is a gash on his arm sustained when it’s your turn and his to patrol the camp after dark. It's when you see the wond that brings you finally to touch him -- a simple gesture, automatic, but couched in the routine flirtatiousness you’d long since imbibed into your personality. It was the graze of a ram horn, of all things, to successfully cut into him -– delicate, yet sure enough to draw blood -- and you’re struck by the similarity of the injury to its affected party.

Your fingers linger on his arm, because you are a sucker for dramatics. His free hand slides itself slowly over yours on his skin, and suddenly you’re staring, again, thinking –- _large. muscular. warm?_ -– with colour creeping back into your cheeks once again.

"You’re injured,” you remember after a while.

“I like spending time with you,” he replies only.

“I didn’t think that were possible.” You have become an idiot; you are still talking about the injury.

“I wasn’t so sure, either,” he says, still talking about you.

And when you look up at him – _tall_ – and finally flash your worst ‘come get me’ grin, you’ve finally made the move you’d both been waiting for you to make.

After that, the initiative is his.

There is nothing more to it.


End file.
